Catalonia closes the month of August with the now traditional rise in unemployment that marks the end of the summer season. According to the data published this Wednesday by the Spanish Ministry of Labor and Social Economy, the Principality ended the eighth month of the year with 329,468 job seekers, an increase of about 14,594 people compared to the month of July, 4.63% more. If compared with August 2025, it must be said, the rise is more controlled, with about 2,100 more unemployed people, an increase of 0.64%. In this way, the Catalan labor market moves away from the minimums it reached 12 months ago, when it registered 327,365 unemployed, the lowest figure since 2007.

When going to check your email inbox in Gmail, a multicolored star reminds the user that they have a new companion: "Ask Gemini," suggests Google, in practically every corner of its suite digital. WhatsApp's search engine is no longer a search engine; it's Meta AI, also present on Instagram as an image and text generator. Like X, formerly Twitter, which has placed access to Grok, the chatbot of Elon Musk's. Outside of traditional applications, ChatGPT (OpenAI) and Claude (Anthropic) have become essential on phones and computers worldwide. "The AI era," as Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates calls it, has arrived; without permission, but with popular enthusiasm: both ChatGPT and Gemini are said to have surpassed 1 billion monthly users this summer; a usage figure that, as Ariadna Font, co-founder of the emerging Alinia AI and creator of Twitter's algorithmic ethics area, acknowledges, "is dizzying in human terms".

The stock market entries of the two competitors leading the race of commercial artificial intelligence – Anthropic (Claude) and OpenAI (ChatGPT)– are touching. While the market entry of Dario Amodei's leading company is assumed to occur this fall, Sam Altman's tech company "will be a listed company in 2027, or even sooner", according to the company's chief financial officer, Sarah Friar, as reported last Wednesday in a meeting with employees.

"Artificial intelligence could be the greatest equalizer ever invented, or the worst source of inequality." Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates believes the potential impact of AI – benefits and pitfalls, in equal measure – is greatly underestimated. In a long essay published on his website, Gates Notes, the tech mogul and president of his namesake foundation has detailed the promises and dangers of a technology that, in his view, could dismantle the entire contemporary social structure. "The transition to the AI era will be one of the most turbulent periods in human history. And, as of now, we are not adequately prepared to face it," he asserts.

The historic trial against Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, for the pernicious effects of its social networks on children and adolescents, forces the debate on young people's access to social networks to be reopened. The Spanish state is already studying a regulation to oblige digital platforms to establish effective controls to ban minors under 16 years of age; a proposal that the Minister of Youth and Childhood, Sira Rego, hopes will be approved after the holidays, according to statements made in a recent interview with the Europa Press agency. Spain would join a movement led by Australia, which banned access to networks for minors under 15 years of age in December. France also aspired to join the trend; although its law, which was to come into effect on September 1, was overturned by the Constitutional Council, alleging that the prohibition "did not provide the necessary legal safeguards to guarantee the right to respect for private life." The body also observed a clear conflict with the freedom of expression of the affected users.

The fashion e-commerce portal Shein presented this Monday on the Hong Kong stock exchange the conditions for its initial public offering. The platform expects to raise up to 1.513 billion euros, on a valuation of 23.122 billion, a substantially lower amount than the peaks recorded in 2022. At that time, shortly after a boom in e-commerce driven by the pandemic, the company founded in China, but headquartered in Singapore, was close to 100 billion dollars in value, about 85.6 billion euros.

"The real estate market is a ticking time bomb, and I want to bet against it." American director Adam McKay dramatized in the film The Big Short the bursting of the 2007 housing bubble around a key figure: Michael Burry, the investor who bet everything against the U.S. credit market and escaped the crisis with unprecedented gains. More than two decades after those warnings, Burry has chosen a new target: artificial intelligence.

The consequences of the social media business model may be catching up with Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram. The giant led by Mark Zuckerberg faces the first session of a trial this Tuesday that could place limits on what part of the US administration considers digital excesses. 29 US states, led by Colorado, California, New Jersey, and Kentucky, accuse the multinational of having introduced features and dynamics on its main platforms that generate addiction among children and adolescents.

Catalonia imports much more than it exports, and the trend has worsened in recent months. According to foreign trade data published this Tuesday by the Spanish Ministry of Economy, the Principality imported products and services worth 59,501 million euros between January and June, a 2.3% increase year-on-year; and sold outside the State's borders for about 51,795 million euros, a 1.3% increase compared to a year earlier. This differential leaves the country's trade balance at a negative 7,705 million euros, a deterioration of close to 700 million euros compared to the first half of 2025, when the deficit stood at 7,062 million. This represents an increase of 9.1%.

The artificial intelligence has been the engine of stock market success in recent years. The tech companies leading the AI market have reached unimaginable heights, to the point where the club of companies worth more than a trillion dollars is no longer an exclusive affiliation. Nvidia exceeds $5 trillion in market capitalization, while both Alphabet (Google) and Apple are above four trillion.

Grifols' results evolution has served to reduce tension among investors, who have not fully calmed down since the publication of the Gotham City Research report against the Catalan company in January 2024. The share price of the plasma-derived medicines giant remains far from the levels it held before the attack, but the good performance of its accounts has been enough to question some of the most critical theses regarding its value. Among them, those of some of the short-selling investors who had accumulated positions in the company's capital, and who have been reducing or withdrawing them in recent months.

The president of the Barcelona Chamber of Commerce and the Council of Chambers, Josep Santacreu, celebrates the definitive endorsement of the Council of Statutory Guarantees (CGE) for the chambers law. The Catalan norm, which will foreseeably reach the Parliament's plenary session at the beginning of the term after a gestation that has lasted more than a decade, passed the examination at the CGE that the Comuns and CUP parliamentary groups requested in mid-July. The left-wing formations asked for a pronouncement from the CGE a few hours after the tense vote in the plenary of the Barcelona Chamber that served to increase the voluntary contribution seats, known as "silver chairs", from the current two to 10. Now the council's endorsement confirms "the legal solidity of the law", in the words of the president.

The tension in the fuel market caused by the war in the Middle East continues to put pressure on consumers' pockets. As confirmed this Thursday by the Spanish government, diesel has become expensive enough during the month of July to reinstate the hydrocarbon tax reduction to 20 cents per liter.

Nvidia, the maker of graphics memory chips that has dominated artificial intelligence in recent years, continues to push the market to grow at a forced pace. As announced in a statement, the most valuable company on the planet has reached an agreement with six of Wall Street's largest financial entities to mobilize $500 billion in investment dedicated to AI infrastructure. In a social media post, its CEO, Jensen Huang, assured that the alliance's objective is to "establish independent financing platforms" to activate the necessary capital to build and launch large-scale AI factories.

The pyrrhic victory of the president of the Chamber of Commerce of Barcelona, Josep Santacreu, in the vote to expand from two to 10 the vocal positions with the highest voluntary contribution – the so-called silver chairs” – has redefined the composition of the institution's plenary. By reducing the number of elected members by suffrage among the demarcation's entrepreneurs from 52 to 44, regulations require a change in the sectoral distribution of chamber seats.

Earthquake at the helm of Google's artificial intelligence segment. The former CEO of DeepMind, Nobel laureate in chemistry Demis Hassabis, has stepped down from leading the British subsidiary to take charge of leading Alphabet's – the parent company of the well-known internet search engine – long-term scientific research. Hassabis relinquishes executive functions at DeepMind, Mountain View's first major bet on AI, but assumes its presidency. In a corporate statement, Google CEO Sundar Pichai stated that the move aims to "accelerate the work done and maintain focus on the frontier of artificial intelligence".

The College of Real Estate Agents (COAPI) of Barcelona has appointed Guifré Homedes as the new representative to the plenary session of the Chamber of Commerce of Barcelona. Homedes, second vice-president of the institution and general director of Amat Immobiliaris, will replace the previous member, Vicenç Hernández Reche, who was removed in the last plenary session, held on July 16. The appointment was formalized last Monday, August 3, with the completion of the necessary procedures before the Chamber. He will therefore be able to participate in the first meeting of the governing body after the summer, scheduled for September 30.

SpaceX, Elon Musk's company, has registered revenues of 7.8 billion dollars during the second quarter of this year, 92% more than during the same period last year. This Tuesday's announcement was widely expected by the markets, as it is the first earnings report as a publicly traded company. On June 12, the aerospace company made the leap to Wall Street on the Nasdaq under the ticker SPCX.

The Ibex-35, the main Spanish stock market index, broke the 20,000-point barrier for the first time this Tuesday. The index of the country's large companies thus culminates the chain of records it has been linking throughout 2026. At the close of the session, it only needed a moderate acceleration – of 0.21%, already outside of trading hours – to rise above historic highs and end the day above 20,023 points.

The extraordinary regularization of foreigners promoted by the Spanish government has added 46,839 affiliates to Social Security in Catalonia since the process began in April. This is according to the latest monthly report from the Ministry of Social Security, headed by Elma Saiz. Across the State, the increase in affiliates linked to the regularization exceeded 262,400 people by July 30 – the latest date for which data is available. Of these, 81.5% were in the general regime, while only 4.8% are registered as self-employed.